Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM

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Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM LADIES' MAN:
Women producers in charge at `Late Show With David Letterman' By AARON BARNHART - The Kansas City Star
Date: 08/29/00 22:15 NEW YORK — David Letterman's brush with mortality this year showed us a side of him we'd never seen. Now one of TV's most familiar faces is revealing another new wrinkle: For the first time in 20 years he has a female sidekick. Maria Pope, unlike the other women who appear on camera with Letterman, is not a giggly actress or supermodel. Nor is she a high-powered celebrity like Barbara Walters or Kathie Lee Gifford, the type who leans in and goes mano-a-mano with the host. When Letterman and Pope banter during the show's "Campaign 2000" segment, it's like he's talking across the fence to a neighbor. They have good-natured, entertaining rapport on the show, and it has helped humanize Letterman. By coincidence, Pope and her colleague Barbara Gaines also were promoted this year to executive producers on the "Late Show." They are the first two women Letterman has put in charge since 1982, when he and his then-girlfriend Merrill Markoe created the old "Late Night" show back at NBC. Yet the timing of Pope as sidekick couldn't have been better. Since Letterman got a new lease on life after undergoing heart bypass surgery last January, there's been a noticeable spring in his step. "It does seem like there's been a resurgence and renewal, and that certainly shows on the air," Pope said in a recent interview at her office inside the Ed Sullivan Theater. While the Dave-and-Maria show goes on in front of the cameras, Barbara Gaines watches from backstage and worries. Worrying is her forte. Gaines has worked for Letterman 20 years, handling (as she puts it) "the stuff people don't write about," mundane details that are crucial to a live TV show — running the daily rehearsal, handling staff issues, fixing broken elevators. In the man's world that was once late-night TV, women always played essential roles. But now they are starting to assume key positions that were held exclusively by men. At the "Tonight Show," executive producer Debbie Vickers, a University of Kansas graduate, helped Jay Leno turn around his foundering ship in 1993. Now she runs late night's top-rated program. Cynthia Garrett did so well as guest host on NBC's "Later" that she was tapped earlier this year to be the regular host. At CBS, Letterman's company this year replaced the top producers at "Late Show" and the "Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn" with women. Kilborn's new executive producer is Mary Connelly, a former "Mad About You" show-runner who cut her teeth at NBC working for Letterman. It's significant if you think of Letterman and Kilborn as avatars of the "frat boy" lifestyle. That image seemed to be reinforced a couple of years ago, when the people who issue tickets to the "Late Show" began asking young men at local colleges to bring their buddies along. Pope said the show isn't trying to exclude women but rather "to get a studio audience representative of our (home) audience, with people — male or female — who know and love the show," she said. "We don't want people who say, `Oh, we can't get tickets for "Cats," let's go see the Letterman show.' " And Gaines and Pope take issue with the idea that they were ever associated with a "guy show." "I think it's a misconception," Gaines said. "Madeleine Smithberg (executive producer of `The Daily Show') came from here. Jude Brennan (now at Oxygen) came from here. Mary came from here. They say this was a boys' club, but all these women came from here." Early days

Few women or men have spent as much time with Letterman, or know him so well, as Barbara Gaines. They met at NBC in May 1980. Letterman was scheduled to begin his live morning show in three weeks. Gaines, then a 22-year-old Long Island native, had heard from a friend that there was an opening for a receptionist.

"I wasn't a big TV watcher," Gaines recalled. "They said it was the guy who always hosts for Carson. And then the associate producer said, `Can you type?'"

She typed Letterman's jokes and other scripted matter into a prompting device, the kind used by news anchors. But after two weeks on the air, Letterman ditched the prompter and went to cue cards. Dejected, Gaines went back to reception duty. Then a production assistant quit, and Gaines applied for and got the job.

One of the duties of a production assistant is to make sure all the blue note cards are placed on Letterman's desk. Another is to make sure the host's coffee mug is filled.

To this day, Gaines still performs both tasks. "I didn't want to get promoted out of being in touch with him," Gaines said. The morning show died after four months. In early 1982 NBC gave Letterman what he really wanted: a late night venue where he could carry on for the amusement of college kids, not housewives.

Pope joined the show that year as an intern, returning in 1983 and going full-time in 1984. She worked her way up through the creative ranks, writing jokes and handling guest talent. Ironically, though, it was Gaines who first had a role on camera.

Longtime fans of the NBC show will remember her as the backstage screamer. It all started one night when Letterman was rummaging around his desk for a certain blue note card. Before the show, Gaines had placed the card practically in front of his nose. Now he couldn't find it.

"He started saying, `Where's the thing? Where's the thing?' and finally I yelled, `It's on the left!'" Gaines recalled.

Screaming Barbara soon became a staple on the show. Letterman enjoyed it, as Gaines recalled: "If I wrote down that the movie opens on the 19th, he'd say, `When does the movie open?'" Finally a viewer wrote in asking Letterman, "Is this the humiliation it takes to work on the show?" He read the letter on the air.

"I'm very shy in real life, but I'm different with Dave," Gaines said.

When Letterman signed on at CBS — it was seven years ago tonight — he had trouble finding his way from the 11th-floor office suite to the stage. So he had Gaines escort him to and from rehearsals.

Another time, at one of the ritual publicity photo shoots loathed by Letterman, writer Bill Zehme saw Gaines trying to coax a smile out of her boss by chanting, "Happy Dave! Happy Dave!"

She was always nauseated at the thought of carrying on with him on TV. It amazes her to watch "Campaign 2000" and see Pope so at ease.

"I definitely envy her," Gaines said. "I would not be able to do my job and do that."

According to Pope, she sometimes doesn't even think about "Campaign 2000" until a few minutes before the taping. Her day is tied up managing the more show-bizzy aspects of "Late Show," and besides, Letterman has made it clear he wants their banter to sound as unrehearsed as possible. Most nights they just go out and do it.

"He would never want to know what I wanted to talk about," Pope said. "If I said to him before the show that this thing happened to me with a cabdriver, he'd say, `Oh, really?' and then he'd say, `Never mind! Never mind! Save it for the show.' "

Pope won't take credit for the popularity of "Campaign 2000." After all these years she can still speak reverentially of Letterman's mastery with ad libs and his innate sense of when to end the segment. She did say, however, that "a lot of the female guests have commented that it's nice to see Dave with a woman." Longtime observers of the show say Letterman and Pope are kindred spirits, and their compatibility is apparent during "Campaign 2000." "I always thought Maria's outlook and spirit was so much closer to Dave's than many of the head writers on the show," said Steve O'Donnell, the "Chris Rock Show" producer who was head writer on "Late Night" for eight years. Both these women work long hours and always have, although there was more time to goof off at NBC. The network had them on a lighter schedule, doing about 160 shows a year. At CBS, they crank out more than 200 shows a year, including two tapings every Thursday.

They could've joined the long parade of Letterman alumni who found other less strenuous work in television. Instead, they stayed. "Maria and I made our decisions to stay here, and obviously that paid off," Gaines said. "These were two women who attached quite a bit of themselves to the program, both personally and professionally," said O'Donnell. "Barbara and Maria enjoy Dave and they like making the show what it is." But these days Gaines worries about the show on weekends, which she said she never did before. And when Letterman needs something during the show, instead of running it out to him, Gaines hands the item to Pat Farmer, a production assistant who appears routinely in the show's comedy bits. She still sets down the blue note cards and Dave's coffee cup on his desk, but those are reminders of a more carefree time.

"I made a decision to become more professional," she added, a bit wistfully. "And the more professional you are, the less fun I guess you have."